You undoubtedly have a cell phone. If you don’t I’m surprised you’re even viewing a web page at this moment. But that’s a discussion we can have privately. I hint at the ubiquitousness of the cell phone only to illustrate the point that most people, at one time or another, intentionally or inadvertently, have used their predictive text feature. Also known as T9, this feature allows your cell phone to “predict” the words you’re trying to type into your text message. It’s as useful as it is disconcerting for the uninitiated. Like most phones mine remembers what I’ve typed before. This is useful when engaged in a texting battle with my best friend in which we’ll text each other people’s names from high school or shitty 90’s bands or any of the 12, 376 inside jokes we’ve accumulated over the years. Here’s a recent exchange:
Text from Mark (best friend): Ugly kid Joe
My text back: SWV (Sisters with Voices)
Mark: Collective Soul
Me: Gerchanovsky
What? Gerchanovsky?
I had begun typing Gerardo. The perpetrator of the 1991 absolutely tragic hit “Rico Suave”
G-E-chanovsky?
Here’s where I tell you that I’ve never once typed Gerchanovsky into my phone. I don’t know a Gerchanovsky. I swear.
Why would a presumably Japanese made phone with Japanese programmed predictive text contain a dictionary with the proper name Gerchanovsky? Was this some vestige of the Cold War? Was the phone trying to contact one of their spies and I happened to mistakenly end up with the phone after I signed a pretty sweet 2 year contract with T-Mobile? What other info is in that phone? Missile codes? Swiss bank account numbers? The answer to why Russian women always have a huge fucking mole on their face?
The intrigue begins. I’ll keep you posted.
